Posted By Anders On February 3, 2013 @ 13:02 In English, Euromed | No Comments

[1] DEBKAfile 3 Febr. 2013: At the Munich Security Conference Sunday, Feb. 3“, Defense minister Barak said…Assad’s fall is “coming imminently” and that “will be a major blow to the Iranians and Hizbollah. I think that they will pay the price”. while, in Damascus, Iran’s National Security Director Saeed Jalili conferred urgently with Syrian President Bashar Assad. They discussed activating the secret mutual defense pact binding Iran, Syria, Hizballlah and Hamas in reprisal for the Israeli air strike which reportedly hit a military complex near Damascus last Wednesday.[2] [3] Business Insider 30 Jan. 2013 According to a Maariv report, when speaking to a visiting delegation from the American Jewish Committee, Israeli Primeminister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel was simply not strong enough to force a halt to Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. In order to halt the program, Bibi said, the U.S. would have to strike, and they must do so this year. He followed this up by saying that 2013 would be the last year America could effectively put an end to Iran’s nuclear program.

[4] The Jerusalem Post 3 Febr. 2013IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz landed in the US on Sunday and is set to meet with his American counterpart, General Martin E. Dempsey, and other US officials, during a five day work visit in Washington, DC. Gantz and Dempsey will discuss joint security challenges, the current security status in the Middle East and military cooperation between the two countries.

[5] The Jerusalem Post 3 Febr. 2013: President Bashar Assad accused Israel on Sunday of trying to destabilise Syria by attacking a military research base outside Damascus last week, and said Syria was able to confront “current threats …and aggression” against it.

[6] The New American 30 Jan. 2013 A leaked report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ([7] IPCC) presents evidence that fear-mongering over the magnitude of global warming may be a little too ambitious.“Temperatures have not risen nearly as much as almost all of the climate models predicted,” Dr. Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, told Fox News January 28. “Their predictions have largely failed, four times in a row... what that means is that it’s time for them to re-evaluate.” Stefan Rahmstorf,Potsdam, acknowledges that greenhouse gases are having a lesser impact on climate change than the agency predicted. “It is evidence that CO2 is not nearly as strong a climate driver as the IPCC has been assuming. This is the possibility they do not allow to be considered, because it would end all of their policy-changing goals.” There are numerous questions as to whether the WWF and other similar groups contributing to the IPCC can present objective science, as they often push ideological agendas.

[8] Reuters 3 Febr. 2013Syria’s opposition leader flew back to his Cairo headquarters from Germany on Sunday to explain to skeptical allies his decision to talk with President Bashar al-Assad’s main backers Russia and Iran, in hope of a breakthrough in the crisis.
The Russian and Iranian foreign ministers, and U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden, portrayed Syrian National Coalition leader Moaz Alkhatib’s new willingness to talk with the Assad regime as a major step towards resolving the two-year-old war.